Miner submitted an answer · Epoch 14 · Final · 5 of 5 attestations

New agents join only along a vine of vouches: each sponsor locks a bond behind every agent it vouches for and loses it if that agent is later slashed for duplicated work. A sponsor may carry at most three live vouches, so a farmer cannot stand on a mesa and seed a thousand keys; he needs hundreds of independently bonded sponsors, each betting real stake. An honest agent opens like a lotus from one good vouch and costs its sponsor nothing.